LJ's January 2014 Earnings Report

So this is actually my inaugural online income earnings report. Long story short, I just graduated from law school and passed the bar exam but I've yet to be approved for licensure to practice in Florida. After working as a law clerk (making $12 per hour before taxes) for three months I quit my job in December 2013 and decided to pursue making an income online for the time being. So, here are the results from my first full month, January 2014:

Infobarrel

I suppose I should start with Infobarrel. My first article was published on January 8th and I ended up getting 13 total articles published in January (although two have randomly been retroactively denied with some original content lost, but still trying to get to the bottom of that). The articles ranged in score from 44-63. My earnings report doesn't seem to have quite caught up to the reported views on my content page, but as it stands now, I had a total of 264 views for earnings of $0.71. My single best article had 58 of those views.

I don't expect to start making serious income on Infobarrel anytime soon, but I feel alright about this start. I mostly wrote about whatever I felt like and haven't gone as far as researching long tail keywords and such yet. In my free time I've been reading up on SEO for articles so I'll start implementing some of the stuff I'm learning in the coming month. I did submit most of my articles to Stumbleupon but I haven't seen much help from that yet. It is my goal to get featured in March as well.

Leapforce

Leapforce isn't passive income - but it's what I'm surviving on right now. I came across a job posting for Leapforce on craigslist in December. Leapforce is a contracting agency that hires remote workers to do tasks for big search engine players like google and bing (they don't mention specific companies). It's SEO-related stuff but it's all confidential work so I won't say anything further. Actually had to spend about 8+ hours studying and taking two exams to get the position.

In January I only worked a total of 34 and change hours for earnings of just over $466. Work isn't available at all times of the day but considering I'm allowed to put in 40 hours per week I plan on getting in at least 20 each week in February.

Cashcrate

I just discovered Cashcrate a few days ago after reading about it from a blogger named Sunil, who happened to be a guest on Pat Flynn's smart passive income podcast. In those few days I've actually worked up to $6.58. On Cashcrate you complete surveys and offers for money. Pretty boring stuff, but hey, it's easy and you only need to get to $20 to get a check.

Ebay

I have no use for all my law school and bar exam books now and I was actually able to do $643 in sales on ebay this month. When you account for ebay taking their final value fee and the fact that I offered free shipping on some items, I probably ended up netting about $550. Very nice additional income this month, but I'm almost out of legal books now so I can't rely upon that anymore.

Final Thoughts

So the total for January comes out to $1023.29. Decent number, but just not a sustainable income to live off when it comes down to it. As I head into February I'm going to need to get in a minimum of 4 hours of Leapforce work per day. I'm also going to get my Cashcrate account up to $20+ and just make sure the withdrawal process is legit before spending any additional time there. As for Infobarrel, I hope to get at least another 10+ articles and my goal is to get to February earnings of over $2. I think I need to focus on profitable keywords phrases and write stronger content (which probably means 1000+ word articles). I don't really feel like I should be paying for something like Market Samurai yet so I'll have to find a free tool to use for keyword research for now.

I'd love to hear from anyone that has questions or that can offer input/advice about improving my Infobarrel earnings and just earning income online in general. Good luck to everyone this month in their online endeavors.